"You have nothing to fear, Nettie. Nettie!"
"Oh, Angel, he's come for me! I knowed he would! I've been lookin' for him, dreadin' it and now he's here. Oh, what am I to do? Where can I hide?"
As on the night when the Bull had trapped her in her room and she had listened paralyzed with fear to the breaking down of her door, her eyes darted wildly about for a means of escape. This time, instead of the narrow room, the whole of the far-flung prairie lay before her with the great grain stocks which she herself had piled together. She broke from Angella's grasp, and fled across the field, and darting from one stack to another, crouched down in despair behind the farthest one.
Angella made no movement to stop the fleeing girl. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she gazed keenly at the man to discover whether it was indeed Bull Langdon; then she turned and quietly went into her house. She put the child in its basket into the inner room, and took down her rifle; the rifle her neighbors in the early days had jeered at but learned to respect. Angella did not load it in the house, but slowly and calmly as Bull Langdon rode up she fitted the bullets in place.
CHAPTER XXII
In a country like Alberta, especially in the ranching sections, it is not difficult for a person to disappear, if he is so minded.
Nettie had lived several months with Angella Loring before her presence there was discovered. On one side of Angella's quarter was a municipality of open range, and on the other, Cyril Stanley's quarter section. Beyond Cyril's ranch was bush stretching for several miles to the Elbow River that intersected, south and north, the land towards the foothills fifty miles out of which was the Bar Q hill ranch. Beyond this dense timber land began, and in its very heart stood the Bow Claire Lumber Camp on the banks of the Ghost and Bow Rivers. Past the timber land the foothills still continued, growing higher and higher till they merged into the chain of Rocky Mountains.
Gossip about Nettie Day had been confined to the foothill ranching country. Her story had run from ranch to ranch, and the general comment was expressed in the customary country phrases of: "I never would have believed it" or "I told you so." But Nettie disappeared from the foothills, and curiosity, in a ranching country as has been said above, is short-lived. Besides, the death of Mrs. Langdon provided the ranchers with fresh excitement, and questions as to Nettie's whereabouts were rarely heard.